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Election Coverage 2014


ChiCubsFan

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Quick observations: WGN is humorously pessimistic, fully prepared to be on the air til the morning hours as several poll locations won't close til 9pm. I have a feeling 9's coverage, airing for so long (7pm on), will be a lot lighter than some of their competitors. Really, as always, this will be WLS and WGN's night. Ron Magers and Mark Suppelsa were built for extended coverage. Their ability to ad lib makes them invaluable on nights like this.

 

WGN will do well til 10 (likely winning), and 7 will win the ratings after that. It's hard to describe, but WMAQ seems to be trying too hard. Everything I've seen of their coverage so far seems to be a little over the top. Way too serious and flashy, without the personality and substance. Carol Marin might save them. I will say, though, I do like NBC5's election graphics almost as much as ABC7's, but the former's is ruined by the use of Helvetica compared to the regular Gotham, while the latter's was designed with Helvetica in mind.

 

WBBM and WFLD will likely not factor much into the ratings, especially with WGN in the mix late. NBC5 is scheduling an hour at 10, ABC7 til 11:35, but CBS2 will screw their viewers by being scheduled for the normal 35 minutes, even though they'll likely go passed that. Luckily, Letterman isn't really big in this market.

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Apparently FOX32 is streaming online all night.

 

Who knew? Who cares?

 

Fox32 also changed out the backdrop durans for video/graphic monitors (which is a bit of a surprise). I'm not sure WGN 4-5 hour long live coverage is necessary. Nothing can be gained until 9 anyway. WMAQ has always gone big (using both the tower studio and Studio 5 one year) so no surprise there. I agree that CBS 2 will be a non-factor, but its of their own doing. We have to wait to see how things unfold once everyone is going head to head.

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Fox32 also changed out the backdrop durans for video/graphic monitors (which is a bit of a surprise).

 

Actually, this was done months ago, but when no one watches, these things don't get noticed.

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Actually, this was done months ago, but when no one watches, these things don't get noticed.

 

I know the durans changed (I mentioned that awhile back), but they didn't have/use a looping graphic/video element until tonight. It's a bit of a throwback to what they used prior to the complete set overhaul years ago.

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I have a feeling 9's coverage, airing for so long (7pm on), will be a lot lighter than some of their competitors.

 

It certainly is. Patrick Elwood, who's an excellent reporter that WGN really should hire full-time (he'd fit in great with the goofy morning crew), just had some random kid at one of the canidate's parties do the toss back to Mark and Micah. The kid, who was probably about eight years old, also happened to be Suppelsa's former neighbor.
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ABC 7 just wrapped up their 9pm webcast, and Ron Magers closed by saying that we, the viewers, could have had the decency to put some clothes on before watching.

 

It cannot be stressed enough how awesome he is.

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ABC 7 just wrapped up their 9pm webcast, and Ron Magers closed by saying that we, the viewers, could have had the decency to put some clothes on before watching.

 

It cannot be stressed enough how awesome he is.

That is priceless.
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Once again, WLS led the way with the most comprehensive coverage. Really can't say enough about them. WMAQ was solid as usual, but the first to wrap things up. WBBM hasn't really shown they are capable of going beyond the norm and had two of the worse guests of the night. The lack of a Political Editor/solid political team shows.

 

WGN was alright. A little too light for my taste and Micah is the worse. And last, and rightly so, is WFLD. They were a complete mess. Numerous technical issues throughout and Dawn Hasbrook was as clueless as they come. Not worthly to succeed Robin Robinson on any level. I'll give Herndon a pass given he did seem to be more knowledgeable than Dawn and didn't interrupt the guests every 5 seconds. 'Chicago's News Station' they are not.

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I gotta say it. Linda Yu looked like she was going to die on-camera around 11:30. Why in God's name did she do 'WCL' on Tuesday morning?

 

SMH. Yeah, by looking at her eyes, you can clearly tell she was tired as hell. I dunno how she can pull it off.

 

At times, I don't know why I think that Linda (by her age) feels like she's Superman or something.

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WGN will do well til 10 (likely winning), and 7 will win the ratings after that. It's hard to describe, but WMAQ seems to be trying too hard. Everything I've seen of their coverage so far seems to be a little over the top. Way too serious and flashy, without the personality and substance. Carol Marin might save them. I will say, though, I do like NBC5's election graphics almost as much as ABC7's, but the former's is ruined by the use of Helvetica compared to the regular Gotham, while the latter's was designed with Helvetica in mind.

 

WBBM and WFLD will likely not factor much into the ratings, especially with WGN in the mix late. NBC5 is scheduling an hour at 10, ABC7 til 11:35, but CBS2 will screw their viewers by being scheduled for the normal 35 minutes, even though they'll likely go passed that. Luckily, Letterman isn't really big in this market.

 

I'm going to chalk this up as a personal victory. It should be noted that WGN was tops in the 9PM hour against the networks. Sure enough, WBBM and WFLD weren't a factor, as they couldn't even combine to match 3rd place WGN. I do, however, have a few questions about these numbers. I wonder if WMAQ's numbers were boosted because they were airing 'Tonight' in the final 30 minutes of this period, once the results were becoming clear. WMAQ also won the demo, and I wonder if the Fallon numbers contributed to that, as well. Never mind, I had only seen that Fallon ended on time at 12AM, but it turns out that NBC stayed on til 11:30 and joined 'Tonight' in-progress...which is kind of a d*ck move, by the way.

 

The ratings from 10-11:30PM, according to Feder:

 

  • ABC 7- 6.5 rating (226,024 households) 11.7 share

  • NBC 5- 6.0 rating (208,638 households) 11.0 share

  • WGN- 4.9 rating (170,387 households) 9.2 share

  • CBS 2- 3.4 rating (118,228 households) 6.3 share

  • Fox 32- 1.2 rating (41,727 households) 2.3 share

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Meanwhile, WGN did take primetime by a mile, but I'm rather surprised at how strong CBS was at 9, but I bet the NCIS lead-in helped them out.

B1sktC9CcAAnzwc.jpg

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NBC 5 just had really terrible coverage of Pat Quinn's concession speech. It looked like they were using really terrible cellular coverage to handle the feed - tons of pixelation and constant video freezes and muddy audio due to low bandwidth. After a while, they gave up and went to an alternate feed for video, but they kept using the audio from the original feed, so the a/v sync wound up being a good 3 seconds off. Very messy.

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I'm going to chalk this up as a personal victory. It should be noted that WGN was tops in the 9PM hour against the networks. Sure enough, WBBM and WFLD weren't a factor, as they couldn't even combine to match 3rd place WGN. I do, however, have a few questions about these numbers. I wonder if WMAQ's numbers were boosted because they were airing 'Tonight' in the final 30 minutes of this period, once the results were becoming clear. WMAQ also won the demo, and I wonder if the Fallon numbers contributed to that, as well. Never mind, I had only seen that Fallon ended on time at 12AM, but it turns out that NBC stayed on til 11:30 and joined 'Tonight' in-progress...which is kind of a d*ck move, by the way.

 

The ratings from 10-11:30PM, according to Feder:

 

  • ABC 7- 6.5 rating (226,024 households) 11.7 share

  • NBC 5- 6.0 rating (208,638 households) 11.0 share

  • WGN- 4.9 rating (170,387 households) 9.2 share

  • CBS 2- 3.4 rating (118,228 households) 6.3 share

  • Fox 32- 1.2 rating (41,727 households) 2.3 share

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Meanwhile, WGN did take primetime by a mile, but I'm rather surprised at how strong CBS was at 9, but I bet the NCIS lead-in helped them out.

B1sktC9CcAAnzwc.jpg

 

 

 

It's interesting that 5 was that close to 7 from 10-1130. Was 7 missing some of it's normal audience, or what might account for that tightness?
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It's interesting that 5 was that close to 7 from 10-1130. Was 7 missing some of it's normal audience, or what might account for that tightness?

 

NBC won the 9P hr. followed closely by CBS and then ABC which may have helped the local NBC O&Os/affiliates a bit. However, WMAQ must be kicking themselves for being the first to end their coverage. Had they stayed on, they may have either tied or beaten WLS. Definitely a missed opportunity.

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